How do I print the entire url.URL struct?

I have the following https://play.golang.org/p/utnlHJqlX1:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"net/url"
)

func main() {
	u, err := url.Parse("http://www.something.com")
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}

	fmt.Printf("%+v", u)
}

I was expecting the "%+v" to print the struct and the fields. Instead it prints: "http://www.something.com"

It seems to be because Parse is returning a pointer to the struct.

Try with this (note the *):

fmt.Printf("%+v\n", *u)

Modified playground:

https://play.golang.org/p/Grjrp2QriK

EDIT

To expand on this, the reason for this is that fmt treats structs that implement Stringer differently when doing %+v.

This is the relevant code: https://golang.org/src/fmt/print.go?s=4772:4849#L577

Since *URL implements Stringer: https://golang.org/pkg/net/url/#URL.String

That's the string being used.

By dereferencing the pointer, we get an URL, which does not implement the interface (cause the receiver in the String method is a pointer).

You can always use the %#v formatting verb to print the Go syntax representation for any value. For example:

fmt.Printf("%#v\n",u)

This can be handy for debugging & automatic code generation. Since the output is the Go representation, this could be pasted into a test or similar as a variable.

This way you don't need to worry about type that override fmt.Stringer